All My Shadows

I made good on my threat and have binge watched almost all of June’s episodes, and I have so many thoughts and questions (having not watched with any regularity in 11 years), but I’ll keep it brief:

Is all of the over-wrought melodrama surrounding Lola’s death really merited? Was she really a popular character with the audience? She just seems to have been another hoop earring girl that the Brit soaps obsess over.

I really really hate back from the dead storylines, especially when the character has been “dead” for a long time. Even when we get a ton of really good stuff bc the character is back, there’s always the part of me that can’t get over how easily soap characters accept that someone they mourned endlessly is just back like they never died at all. Jesse Hubbard, I am talking directly to you! In EE’s case, I remember feeling this way when they brought Kathy back, and now it’s the same with Cindy. Idk, I feel like I would need years of therapy if my dead dad just reappeared after six years.

The show feels surprisingly familiar! There’s a good mix of characters who’ve been around for 10+ or 20+ years and characters who have showed up within the last five years. Meanwhile, when I gave Corrie a watch this week, I kept asking “Who are these people?” 

I think he's a good choice, honestly. I haven't watched anything he's hosted in a long, long time, but based on his earlier stuff and Idol, I do think he's the kind of host who will let the game and contestants be the star. He's never really been an "It's all about me" type, which is what most games tend to go for these days.

I will literally get back into watching EE solely on the strength of Thomas Law’s sexy ass returning.

Bob’s mid-80s era being available to watch 24/7 has definitely revealed just how much was allowed and ignored. It really feels like there’s a gross (and often awkward) moment at least once an episode. Pat…well, I’ve never been a huge regular viewer of WoF - now or in the past - and his demeanor has not been very welcoming for a long, long time, but I just can’t downplay how much he (and Bob) have meant to the genre. Great role models? No. Great game show hosts, in their prime? Absolutely. We don’t have many of those active in the business anymore.

On 6/12/2023 at 6:59 PM, kalbir said:

It boggles my mind that Pat Sajak has hosted Wheel of Fortune longer than Bob Barker hosted The Price is Right.

In all of the talk about Sajak retiring this week, this thought never occurred to me and yes - it's mind-boggling. It really makes me sad because little bit by little bit, the classic stalwarts of game shows are passing away or retiring. Bob, Alex, and Pat were the hosts you could count on for over 20 years. Even when other shows/hosts came up and had a turn a spotlight, it was usually fleeting, but the Big Three were still there.

Speaking of Alex/Jeopardy, I've been watching the Pluto channel a LOT lately, and it seems they've settled in to really just airing series of episodes featuring long-lasting returning champions. It's interesting to see, but it's gotten pretty old pretty quickly, and seeing so much of it at one time really drives home how different the game has become. Yes, it's exciting to watch these contestants quickly build up thousands and thousands of dollars over a few days, but you can see the look of futility in the other contestants' faces, Alex was never really tactful about not just making it all about the returning champs, and many of the returning champs just have really, really uncomfortable and unlikeable personalities. I've never liked James Holzhauer, but in watching the reruns, I've taken a strong disliking to Austin Rogers, too. Some were not as bad, but most of them are pretty smug.

I feel like Y&R had tons of minor characters on the recurring roster from the 80s to the 2000s.

I remember being excited to see all of the old photos in that opening sequence, especially since the previous one had *some* old photos but not nearly as many. That guitar strum over Erica the Younger is very very low-key iconic, then young Ruth Warrick. They made sure Phoebe was present in every single episode, even after her death. I wasn’t crazy about the straight-across title after it had been stacked vertically forever, but all these years later, it really doesn’t matter.

I always wondered how it would have flowed had they done A and B versions instead of cramming everyone into one. OLTL was the only one to do two versions, correct?

I’m current in the 160s, and the show has indeed picked back up. It really works best as a community ensemble involved in an array of bizarre stories, with Mary as the character floating in and out of all of them.

I’m very thankful that everyone involved just got straight to the point and said he’d be playing Jack on GH. I would have been VERY annoyed with any kind of tease about him “playing Jack again” on a new AMC series. We’ve had enough of that.

I already know FV won’t resist the urge to finally get his hands on Erica, even in passing mentions.

I don't know if this has been posted here, but it's a blooper reel from 1982.

I remember it being on WoST twenty years ago, but it's been MIA since then, so it's nice to see it again! Oddly enough, I remember so many of these, especially poor Hugh Franklin's "Oh [!@#$%^&*], Henderson's all I can think of"

Pluto TV said, when the Soaps channel debuted, that late 2010s Y&R and B&B was just the beginning and that more shows from different eras would be added, but here we are, still with just those episodes of those shows.

It's funny because Pluto tab is filled with literally everything our grandmas loved (and that we loved as well, by extension). There are 24-hour channels devoted to Matlock, Gunsmoke, Andy Griffith, Beverly Hillbillies, Love Boat, Carol Burnett, Ed Sullivan, Julia Child, Bob Ross, Price is Right with Bob, Family Feud with Richard and Ray, etc. Then there are the variety channels showing long blocks of In the Heat of the Night, Ozzie and Harriet, All in the Family, Sanford and Son, MacGyver, etc. It just really really sucks that literally everything that appeals to the older TV viewer is represented - except. for. classic. soaps! I feel like a channel that starts ATWT and GL in 1979 and goes from there would fit in perfectly, but who knows.

This is truly heartbreaking. As a soap fan who's never been a big GH watcher, ever, it's still very hard to not feel a sense of loss. She was a daytime icon in the truest sense.

I watched the first season of Euphoria and liked it a lot, but it's hard for me to put them into the same category of teen drama. Degrassi, especially in the real glory days of TNG, was such a slice-of-life show that kept things small and slow-moving and could switch up moods and vibes accordingly. Euphoria is definitely a product of today's TV, where it's a foreboding from beginning to end. Even Skins could be light and fun when it needed to be.

On 4/27/2023 at 7:25 PM, Chris B said:

I’ve been curious about this show, but I haven’t bought if because I know the spin off isn’t available and I feel I’d want to see the full story. 

The spin-off is only 130 episodes, and the original is 325, so you'd be seeing close to 3/4 of the full story. Watching it for the first 130 of MHMH is worth it all alone, IMO.

I just looked it up on Amazon, and it's STILL selling for well over $100!? I can understand having some pause about buying it.

I personally find it extremely hard to believe that any production/distribution company would willingly trash their own product for no other reason than "we don't care." I mean, I absolutely believe that they don't care - that's just a matter of hard-proven fact at this point. But I agree with Vee. "We don't care" means "we don't care" at all. They denied requests for Liz Hubbard clips because no one wants to sift through the archive to find them.

Remember that awful soap special that aired on, I think, ABC just a few years ago? Majority of the clips were very obviously grainy lifts from YouTube, including stuff from the 2000s. It was a special on ABC! And the clips from ABC SOAPS weren't even from ABC!

41 minutes ago, Vee said:

You pay attention to the icons?

Well, considering they are immediately to the left of the thread titles, and we read things from left to right, I feel like it would be harder work to not notice them.

I need to understand why the little icon next to this thread is a circle and not a star when I know damn well that I've been one of the most active posters in this thread lol

Currently watching this on Paramount Plus. It’s definitely an Entertainment Tonight special - it feels like they produced a bunch of segments for regular ET and just edited them together into an hour show. Much less of a celebration of 50 years of Y&R and much more of a celebration of Y&R on the occasion of its 50th anniversary.

The loss of a true daytime legend. We will all remember her as Lucinda Walsh, but I can’t express enough how fortunate we are to have easy access to her incredible work as Dr. Althea Davis on The Doctors.

Wait wait wait - Sean and Tom were supposed to be twins? I always thought Sean was the younger brother.

21 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

Yes, it is what it is ...but...

The noir look skyscrapers don't say Y&R to me.

How about a some earlier(flattering) clips of each castmember in B&W fading from one to the next as the color pose is superimposed over the top?

eg Victor in his original cowboy look and then a couple of other clips throughout the years.

A young Nikki on stage, a shot from the first wedding etc

Highlighting the history and legacy of those characters. For newer cast members eg Brytni/Sean just find some clips where they look a bit different eg different hairstyles/haircuts

In my mind it looks great !!

I was actually thinking this myself - the really weird and creepy ATWT gold fields of wheat opening sequence did get one thing right, using classic clips in the background for each character’s (entirely too large) headshot. Perfect for an anniversary opening.

It's giving art deco, which is a style I don't believe anyone has ever associated with Y&R.

It's ugly and unnecessary, since it's the same basic concept if the one they already had. The changes they made were not improvements at all, and the big 50 isn't needed. It's not like how B&B very sleekly had the "30" flash in gold within the "BO" in "BOLD."

I'm curious as to what October 10, 1970, and December 6, 1976, are.

I've never seen his AW run, but David Canary made basically all of Adam's (and Stuart's!) pairings work on AMC. I might be forgetting an obvious dud or two, but for 25 solid years, the man was a captivating romantic lead.